The Birthgrave

“All my life,” I said, “knowledge has come to me for which I was not ready.”

“When will they fight?” I asked.

“Tomorrow. Daybreak. It is man’s work.”

I laughed. “I too have fought and killed, Kotta. It is the work of fools, not men.”

It’s legend now, but legend is the smoke from the fire, and the wood that the fire consumes is the substance.

I do not know why it distressed me so much to see an animal die when human death did not move me. Perhaps because they were more beautiful, and there is no corruption in them, while in the best of men there can always be found some guilt or wickedness which seems to have earned him death.

Anxiety grew, the fear that always comes when an established pattern falters.

Strange, that when we feel we understand all things, we understand nothing. Strange, that when we feel we understand nothing, we have begun, at last, to understand.

We are the sum of our achievements, nothing more and nothing less. The mountain road which led us here was built by a dead people none of us would remember otherwise. What we create is the only part of us which can survive, or has the right to. Man is nothing, except to other men.

True beauty is always oddly surprising.

“Don’t judge yourself,” he said. “None of us are ever good at it.”

“Uasti was a good teacher,” he said. “She made you look a little way into yourself, see what you could become.”

I am alone. No one stands beside me. I have no Dark Prince to ride in my chariot, to walk with me, to hold me to him. I have no one. And yet. I myself, at last, I have myself. And to me, at this time, it seems enough. It seems more, much more, than enough.